Solid-state lasers for ultrashort pulse generation

Intracavity semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) [1,2] provide a versatile and effective tool for simple, reliable, self-starting, passively mode-locked or Q-switched solid-states lasers, extending from Q-switched pulses in the nanosecond and picosecond regime to mode-locked pulses from 10's of picoseconds to sub-10fs. This talk reviews the design requirements of SESAMs for stable pulse generation in both the mode-locked and Q-switched regime. The combination of device structure and material parameters for SESAMs provide sufficient design freedom to choose key paramaters such as recovery time, saturation intensity, and saturation fluence, in a compact structure with low insertion loss. We have been able to demonstrate, for example, passive modelocking (with no Q-switching) using an intracavity saturable absorber in solid-state lasers with long upper state lifetimes (e.g. 1 μm neodymium transitions) [1].